Slayers RPG Patch (v2) Readme File
Created by Matthew La France 8-8-2002
mlafrance@hampshire.edu

I'll keep this short and simple.

This is an addition to the slayers patch file released by Robert Boyd. All documentation relating to this original patch can be found in the file "oldhack.txt" included in this zip file. Please refer to this file for original credits, instructions on how to implement the patch via IPS.EXE, and original translation notes, etc.

What is included in this ZIP:

IPS.EXE
oldhack.txt
slayers(v2).ips
readme.txt
GOODSLAYERS.tbl

Additions to this translation:

I have added another 10K of translated material to this patch including:

- Full battle menu translation including battle commands and tactics.
- Full story dialog through the first dungeon and some of the town.
- Many more items, spells, monsters, attacks, and characters.
- Many character labels appearing in dialog boxes.
- Several location names* on the world map

For the first town:
- All dialog and options for the weapon and item shops, excluding the quantity counter for items.
- Most dialog and options for the inn and bar.
- All character dialog except the inn.

Translation notes:

* The "world map" seems to use an extended kanji set which overlaps values used to reference the English character set. Therefore, only the last 10-12 roman characters were available to write location names. I took the liberty of making up names from the characters available.

For the main dialog, I was limited to the number of bytes allocated for the Japanese characters when writing any one statement. Therefor many of the "translations" are desperate attempts to take a lengthy Japanese statement and get it's point across in only a few short English words. I tried to get around this by adding blank "space" to the ROM and redirecting dialog pointers to these blank areas. Unfortunately I never got this to work successfully. 

Why I stopped working on this patch:

After translating the dialog in the first town and dungeon it became apparent to me that the system I was using was very limited. I do not know how to program well enough to perform a script dump and therefor used screen caps to translate dialog. Attempts to add an additional, better looking, English font were unsuccessful. After viewing the final results I decided that this was just too simple a hack for me to be satisfied with. I am releasing my final results here, as well as a copy of my character table (GOODSLAYERS.tbl). I hope this assists someone in creating a more sophisticated hack, or inspires him or her to continue this hack if they desire. At the very least, English speaking fans can now enjoy a little more of the game.

Feel free to distribute this patch as much as you like. That is all. Cheers.